Tariffs are officially in effect on goods coming into the U.S. from Canada and Mexico. There’s also an additional ten percent tariff on Chinese imports, bringing the total to 20 percent. Arlan Suderman, chief commodities economist for StoneX, says there’s a lot of uncertainty right now, which may not be unintentional.
“There is, and it has us also trying to guess what Trump might do. President Trump likes to keep that, and certainly, he uses that as leverage in negotiations to keep everybody guessing what he might do. So, as I give my opinion on what I think is happening here, we have the increased tariffs on China, which will put a 10 percent on February 1 going to 20 percent on March 4. We have the 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico that were on again and off again, and then apparently on again last week, and I thought, okay, there’s something else going on here because I’ve seen them do a great deal to help seal the border, so what else is at play here? I felt like it had something to do with China.”
He says the tariffs on Canada and Mexico went into effect despite significant improvement in border security by both countries. Suderman says China is the reason for the 25 percent duties still going into effect.
“We certainly saw, then, the United States asked Mexico over the weekend if they would match our tariffs on China because we know there’s a lot of Chinese goods that come through Mexico to try to take advantage of our free trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, and Canada as well. So, Mexico said, okay, we would consider that. So, then they turn to Canada and say, Will you do the same? And we’re still waiting to get that response right now, whether Canada will do the same, and it’s my sense that if they do, the 25 percent tariffs will suddenly go away or be paused again or whatever.”
Even the situation with Ukraine has to do with gaining an economic foothold over China.
“Ukraine is in a war with Russia. Obviously, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was a very bad thing to do. Yes, Russia’s fear is that Ukraine will be part of NATO. Putin is very insecure about that because Russia has been invaded 50 times over its history, and it’s worried that that’s what NATO wants again, and so he’s worried about it. President Trump says, okay, how about if we keep them out of NATO? But yet, we work out a deal to where we get the rare earth minerals that are in Ukraine, which would remove another item of leverage that China has on us now, and it would put our resources in Ukraine. So, if Russia attacked Ukraine, they would risk killing some of our people, and they know that we defend our people.”
If a U.S.-Ukraine agreement is reached, China is worried about potentially being isolated on the world stage.
“What we hear from our people on the ground in China, Xi Jinping is worried about Putin and Trump cozying up to one another and isolating China. None of the three trust each other. They don’t trust each other at all, but Putin cozied up to Xi Jinping during the Ukraine war to leverage that relationship versus the West. But if the Ukraine war is over, Putin’s bigger threat is this growing power to his south in China. So, we see Xi Jinping doing a bunch of things to try to maintain that relationship with Putin. So, I think Trump is working on all of that, and everything starts to make sense, all the tariff talk and everything, when you start looking at it in that light.
He says many of the layers behind the tariff discussions could change at a moment’s notice.